I realized then that I had mistaken the nature of love. Love has nothing to do with desire; it’s the quest for the divine, found on earth. It’s finding a woman whose soul preserves a shard of heaven, and worshipping her…worshipping at her feet. I was a new man.
Thurman had never seen his father looking like this. He looked…old. Tired. Even desperate. Thurman felt like curling his lip, but he didn’t. He bowed and offered his father a cup of tea. “An unexpected pleasure.”
Henry Thurman sat down heavily and waved Cooper out of the room. Then he braced his hands on his knees in that way Thurman always hated, because it just wasn’t something a gentleman did. His father still had a smell of the printing press around him, for all his grandfather was the one who started the enterprise.
“There’s no way to put this easily,” he said.
Thurman sat down opposite him. He had just been about to go for a drive in Hyde Park, and he wanted nothing more than to lope out of the room and leave this perspiring, heavy man behind.
“We’re ruined.”
“What?”
“Ruined. I borrowed some money, and thought it would come through in the percents…” The story tumbled out. One name kept drumming through the flood of miserable language from his parent. Felton. Felton. Felton.
“Who is Felton?” Thurman finally demanded.
His father broke off and blinked at him. “Lucius Felton. Runs most of London, on the financial side anyway. He closed the loan…” And he was off again.
Thurman had the gist of it. Lucius Felton had ruined his family. Lucius Felton was responsible for the loss of the house in Kent—for that was what his father was saying now—and the loss of his allowance, obviously, and the loss of his racing curricle.
Lucius Felton.
The man responsible for giving the Sausage her dowry.
The man married to the Sausage’s sister.
He’d never felt sicker in his life, just sitting there and watching his father’s red face as he said that his mother’s jointure was secure, of course, and so they would be retiring into the village where she grew up because there was a small house. One of his brothers was entering the Church.
“Mr. Felton,” his father said, and the words filtered through the haze in Thurman’s brain, “has been kind enough to buy your youngest brother a commission in the army.”
He stopped.
Thurman just waited. Surely there was more. Surely Felton had told him? Had told his family what he had done?
But Felton hadn’t, because his father was looking at him with a horrible expression of pain and pity and despair. “I’m the saddest about you,” he said. “Your mother and I will be happy in the village. You know we like a simple life. But you…I shouldn’t have played ducks and drakes with your inheritance, son.”
“No, you shouldn’t have,” Thurman said sharply. “How could you get yourself into the hands of someone like Felton?”
“I didn’t know…he was always most kind, but then…” In five minutes Thurman saw it all. In the last week, Felton had bought up all of his father’s outstanding loans. He had taken over the printing press. He had kindly “spared” his mother’s jointure, and given them, as an act of charity, the money to buy his brother a commission.
“So there’s only you,” his father said.
“Me?” Thurman replied, still not quite following.
“There’s no money, lad. This house—” He glanced around. “Well, the rent is paid for the next week. You’d best tell your man to leave immediately. And what are you to do then, Eliot? Have you an idea of a profession, lad? You must have learned a great deal off at those schools of yours.”
Thurman was silent.
“I’m trying not to worry about you,” his father said. “Not you, with all your friends from Rugby. They’ll help you out of this tight spot. Get you a position somewhere. Perhaps you could be a secretary to a great man. You were always clever with a pen.”
Thurman could barely make his lips move. “Out,” he said.
“Well, now—”
“Out! You’ve taken my inheritance and destroyed my life. The only good thing about this is that I won’t ever have to listen to the foolish ravings of an imbecilic old man like yourself any longer! We were never of the same stock, never!”
Henry Thurman rose slowly. “You’ll always have a home with us, Eliot. We know you’ve grown above us. But you’ll always be able to come home.”
“Never,” Thurman spat. “Never.”
Henry Thurman stumbled out of the house, feeling as sick as a man could. Of course, he had ruined young Eliot’s life. Eliot was raised to be the hope of the family, the young gentleman who was going to move into the aristocracy. He was friends with all those lords. Surely he’d fall on his feet. His fine friends would help him. That Darlington, for instance, whom Eliot always talked of.
Inside the house, Thurman was bellowing at Cooper. “The card,” he said hoarsely. “The card!”
Cooper had listened at the door just long enough, and then ducked into the back to wrap the silver in a cloth. He knew where the card in question was. “I’ll look for it, sir,” he said, heading to the back of the house so he could wrap up the silver teapot and a pair of candlesticks he’d always fancied.
After a reasonable period of time, when he had everything he wanted crated and tied in two large boxes, he brought Thurman the card.
Just as he expected, Thurman glanced at the inscription, HARRY GRONE, THE TATLER, and banged out of the house. That gave Cooper more than enough time to whistle for a hackney, load up the two crates, and hop into the carriage.
He left the front door swinging open, just in case anyone cared to enter.
As it happened, two gentlemen did choose to enter. They strolled into Thurman’s sitting room and glanced around at the furnishings.
One of them, the Earl of Ardmore, stripped off his coat.
The other, Lucius Felton, flipped through the meager invitations ranged on the mantelpiece. Then he walked to the window and drew back the curtain just a trifle.
They had to wait until evening.
Thurman did Grone’s little errand, sweeping into a printing press that was all sixes and sevens as the news was out that it had a new owner. He bullied his way into the files and left.
But Thurman hadn’t gone home directly with the bag of sovereigns Grone handed over. He’d taken it to the Convent, and bought everyone round after round of drink. He couldn’t stop thinking that by tomorrow the news would be everywhere. By tomorrow it was all over.
But for one last, golden evening he could still be a rising young gentleman, an heir with plenty of the ready. He threw a sovereign on the counter as the tapsters curled their lips in a semblance of smiles. He threw a sovereign in the air when a barmaid perched on his knees. He pretended Darlington and Wisley and the rest were with him…even though they weren’t.
When he finally staggered home, the remnants of Grone’s bag in his pocket, he was no longer worrying about the day to come. He’d deal with that tomorrow.
He fell out of the hackney, giving the driver a sovereign when he asked for eight pence. The curtains in his sitting room twitched, though he didn’t notice.
He banged through the front door and just stood there, sodden with beer and gin, shaky and drunk. He threw back his head like a wolf howling at the moon. “Cooper!” he bellowed. “Cooper!”
Cooper didn’t come, but the door to the sitting room slowly swung open, so Thurman lurched through that door.
41
From The Earl of Hellgate,
Chapter the Twenty-sixth
Not every man is lucky enough to fall in love with a woman of this sort. I know I don’t deserve her…and yet, Dear Reader, I am lucky enough to carry her promise in my heart. She will marry me. I will roam no further…the empty places in my heart are filled by her goodness and sweetness.
I will spend my life cherishing the ground she walks on.
Somehow she’d end
ed up falling asleep in Darlington’s arms again. It was all too easy, now that Josie was married and she had returned to her own little house. He came for tea, and before she knew it, she was in his hackney…
Why shouldn’t she marry him? Griselda asked herself. People would make jokes. They would make fun of her. They would say she was baby-stealing. She looked at the tumble of hair next to her again.
Sometimes he seemed older than she. There were people like that, people who were old before their time.
And he needed her. She would lead him to a happier relation with his father, and stop him from being spurned by his family. She would celebrate his writing.
Perhaps she should wake him and tell him her decision?
It would do him no harm to worry. She swung her toes out of bed as quietly as she could. Thank goodness he didn’t have servants, the way every other person did. Her clothes were in a crumpled heap in the entryway; Griselda had to stop and press her hands to her hot cheeks once, from the pure shame of it.
She wasn’t quite certain how to get home. She would have asked a footman to fetch her a hackney, but Darlington had told the servants not to return until noon.
She almost woke Darlington up, but now she was wedded to the idea of making him beg a few more times. It was all so…delicious. Why shouldn’t she be courted, like other women? He should bring her roses, and a poem or two. The idea of a poem written by Darlington made her giggle.
She didn’t know his neighborhood all that well, but surely Fleet Street lay just to the right? Within a moment of walking she glimpsed the large thoroughfare where she would certainly be able to call a hackney.
When a carriage slowed to a stop next to her, she turned to it gladly. She hadn’t welcomed the idea of hailing a carriage—rather vulgar, to wave her hand for all to see—and it was far better that one had…
That was not a hackney.
In fact, it was a carriage she knew quite well, almost as well as she knew her own. A footman leaped from the back and held open the door.
There was nothing for it, so she entered.
“Lady Blechschmidt,” Griselda said, sitting down with as much dignity as was possible. Her hair was bundled into a simple knot. She had done little more than wash her face. If Emily Blechschmidt glimpsed her dinner dress being worn in the morning, it would be instantly apparent that she hadn’t been home since the previous day.
“Lady Griselda.”
Emily Blechschmidt was at least six years older than she. As always, she was dressed with the kind of sober elegance that invited no untoward glance.
I was getting to be like that, Griselda thought to herself. I could have become like Emily, who isn’t even forty, but is one of the fiercest moralists in the ton, quite as sharp-tongued as an old maid of eighty.
For a moment the carriage was utterly silent. Griselda’s mind was racing. Why did it have to be Emily whose coach drove by, Emily, who was known far and wide for her fierce and dogmatic views of unchaste behavior and loose women?
For her part, Emily had taken one swift look at Griselda Willoughby and known exactly how Griselda had spent her night. After all, Emily had spent her entire life watching the ton from the sidelines, watching as men and women fell into each other’s arms, danced into the garden together, gave each other secret smiles from the chaperone’s corner. It made her angry; it made her feel sick with longing; it made her feel small. She prided herself on her sharp tongue when it came to loose women, on her sizzling pronouncements when it came to hurly-burly debutantes.
To Emily, Griselda’s imperfect hair and sleepy eyes meant that she should, of course, spurn her friend. Even if they had been friends for years.
But there were times when a woman had to put aside morality and ethics.
“You never asked me why I was at Grillon’s Hotel when you saw me there last year,” she said finally.
Griselda was staring down at her hands, but she looked up. “It wasn’t my place.”
“I think it should be,” Emily said. “If we’re to be friends.”
Griselda’s smile was a little lopsided. “I rather thought we were friends.”
“We have been acquaintances,” Emily told her. “You would be horrified by what I was doing at the hotel.”
Griselda’s smile grew wider. “I promise you that I won’t be.”
“You will be.” Emily was silent for a moment. But she was tired of all the silence, and besides, that affaire was over. “I’ll never do such a thing again.”
Griselda nodded. “Unless you wish to.”
“I don’t wish to. I’m bitterly ashamed of myself.”
Griselda didn’t seem to share her feelings of shame, so Emily realized that Griselda probably had a wedding in her future. “You couldn’t understand.”
“Actually, I do,” Griselda said. “I really do. After all, Emily, I myself…” Her voice trailed off.
“I would gather that you just spent a night with a gentleman.”
“I believe,” Griselda said, “that I shall marry the gentleman in question, Emily. I believe I shall.”
There was silence between them again. But Emily felt—had felt for weeks—that if she didn’t tell someone, her heart would crack open. “I too had an affaire,” she cried, hearing the wildness in her own voice.
Griselda smiled at her. “I guessed that.”
“But I’ve been so moralistic, so disparaging of others,” Emily said. “You have always been chaste in your behavior, but you have rarely passed judgment on others. Do you loathe me?”
“No,” Griselda said without hesitation.
“You will,” Emily said. “You will.”
Griselda blinked. “A married man?” she asked.
“Worse,” Emily said.
“Worse?”
Emily couldn’t look at her anymore. “Much worse,” she whispered.
“I can’t think,” Griselda said. “A servant?”
“Servants are just men, married or unmarried; they’re just men!”
“Then—” Griselda’s mouth fell open. “You—”
“Gemima,” Emily said, and her voice was hard, saying it. “Lady Gemima.”
“She’s enchanting,” Griselda said after one gaping second. “Are you and she…”
Emily could feel the tears boiling up in her throat, all the tears that she couldn’t shed because no one—no one—could know the terrible things she’d done. “No!” She couldn’t even look at Griselda. But a moment later a soft handkerchief was put in her hand, and Griselda’s arm wrapped around her shoulders.
“Don’t cry, Emily,” Griselda said, and it didn’t sound as if she were going to throw open the carriage door and jump out from pure disgust. “Don’t cry. Gemima is lovely. If I—if—well, she’s so funny, and nice.”
“She’s—She’s not nice,” Emily wept. “She—She—” She broke down and after that she didn’t even understand the things she tried to say because they were so mortified and despairing that they couldn’t be put properly into words.
After a while the carriage stopped. Somehow they ended up in Griselda’s snug little drawing room, and the whole story came out in bits and sobs, and Griselda rocking Emily against her shoulder, just as if she weren’t the most immoral woman on the face of the earth.
“You see,” Emily said, her voice a little hoarse from the crying, “she’s going abroad. And she’s—she’s taking her new friend with her, and that’s all there is to it.”
“I’m so sorry,” Griselda said. She handed her a cup of tea. “Gemima has made a terrible mistake.”
“Why shouldn’t Gemima fall in love? And with such a perfect woman in every way,” Emily said despairingly. “Perfect!”
“As are you. But who can tell why these things happen?”
“It’s because I’ve been so unsympathetic to others. I’ve thought and thought about it in the last fortnight, and I know why this has happened, why Gemima fell in love with someone else. It’s my just desert. Fate has dealt me a b
low because I deserved it.”
“Nonsense,” Griselda said. “Sympathy follows experience, Emily. I’m sure you could never be indifferent to the foibles of others. But you were never heartless. You’re being far too harsh on yourself.”
Emily sniffed, and put away her handkerchief. Crying was such an odd thing. She’d wet her pillows every night, but it only made her feel weak and ill. But one good cry into Griselda’s shoulder and she felt it might be possible to face tomorrow. “Whoever he is, he doesn’t deserve you,” she said damply.
Griselda laughed. “That’s a given. As you wisely pointed out, he is a man.”
Emily had to smile a bit at that. “Oh,” she said, “I do have some news for you too, Griselda.”
Griselda looked up from the teapot.
“It’s about Hellgate.”
“They’ve discovered who wrote the Memoirs?” Griselda asked.
“Exactly. It’s so fascinating: Mayne can’t have more than the slimmest acquaintance with the author.”
“What sort of person is he?” Griselda asked, carefully refreshing the hot water. “We decided that he must be a devout reader of the gossip pages.”
“It’s much more interesting than that,” Emily said, accepting a pyramid cream. “This looks absolutely delicious! How does your cook make it?”
“It’s her own recipe,” Griselda said, “and she guards it fiercely. I do know that it takes hartshorn shavings and blanched almonds. I think the prettiest part is the way she cuts up the lemon peel into the shape of leaves.”
“Yes, and stacks them up so neatly. My cook could never do this. She’s quite good at ordinary things, you know. Like fricassee of turnips.” She made a face and Griselda laughed. “But really, you won’t believe who wrote that book.”
Griselda frowned.
“You’ve forgotten what we were talking about,” Emily accused. Griselda turned pink again. “That’s because you’re in love. Ah well, I shall dance at your wedding.”
Griselda’s smile had a deep happiness that would have made Emily bitter, except she didn’t feel bitter any longer. “Now listen,” Emily said. “This is the most fascinating on dit I’ve heard all season.”